Trailer impact design with Omnisphere 2

Although Omnisphere really shines with pitched material, its powerful engine and creative effects can be used to create any cinematic sound. Today we’ll look into some quick tips & tricks for creating effective trailer-style impacts/thud/low hits.

STEP 1: SELECTING THE RIGHT SOUNDSOURCE

As always, selecting the right soundsource is the most important step – it’s all about the sound. There are plenty of percussive soundsources in Omnisphere that can be used to create impacts, but this time I’ll use one of my favorite features in Omni 2 – sample import.

Two samples that I’m going to use are:

1.) Simple noise oscillator in Omnisphere 2 for Layer A, which by itself sounds like this:

2.) Simple electronic kick with high hat, made with Cubase’s bundled Groove Agent ONE for Layer B. Any similar samples will work great.

STEP 2: MODIFYING THE LAYERS

First thing to do is to transpose Layer A with Noise 12 semitones down. Impacts are all about punch, rumble and low-end. Then, amp envelope with nice duration and release will provide spacious decay. Since impacts don’t need too much of a high-end info, Omnisphere filters do a great job with sculpting the sound further. For this type of sound design, LPF Juicy filters in Omnisphere are my favorite and in this instance I used the LPF Juicy 48db filter for both layers. Layer page now looks like this:

Next, adding Harmonia will fatten the sound and make it much more punchy:

Next, for Layer B I’m importing the electro kick + high hat sample I recorded with Groove Agent ONE via User Audio feature. For more lower rumble kind of sound, you can pitch it down -12 semitones too, but I left it as it is to have more frequency range. Filter and amp envelope treatment is similar to Layer A and you can adjust filter cutoff to taste. Also, Omnisphere’s waveshaper works great to adding a bit more grit and bite. Layer B page:

Here’s how it sounds without any added FX:

STEP 3: USING THE EFFECTS

Effects are crucial for trailer sound, so the last step is to add effect to our impact. EQ and compression for punch, tape saturation and finally reverb (plate with nice, long tail) are needed to make this patch production-ready.